A Hamburger Today

Weekend Cook and Tell Round Up: Imperfections

Our last challenge for Weekend Cook and Tell was for all of you to share your not-so-perfect dishes. We called this Imperfections. Maybe your dish wasn't beautiful or didn't turn out quite how you expected, but that doesn't mean it wasn't amazing to the taste. Perhaps your different outcome was even better. Here are your real life beauties.

scalfin likes to make Indian pudding which apparently is "always a visual failure. Always."

mangotomato is proof that sometimes we're overly hard on our own dishes. Her submissions didn't seem all that "fugly" to us. That being said, we can totally relate to a dish not behaving properly. The dough for mangotomato's hamentashen refused to cooperate. After much effort and only four successful hamentashen, she altered course and used the remainder of the dough to make a grape pie. Survival of the fittest award goes to you, mangotomato.

claireOOTO's is a real tale of cooking inspiration. Excitement of using a new cooking tool quickly turned to utter frustration after dropping the completed dish and breaking the new bamboo steamer. Argh! So much time spent just to finish with a less than optimal result. After a good night's rest, claireOOTO decided to not let a moment of clumsiness defeat her and remade the steamed dumplings with beets, black beans, and lime. Dumpling nirvana. We think that most of us can relate to the frustration of a ruined dish and the satisfaction of overcoming a momentary cooking curse. We're so glad you gave it a second chance, claireOOTO!

Finally, zahavah proves that sometimes a dish just required editing, as in editing the name. When prepping for a tarte tatin, she realized she was short on apples. A quick trip to the market solved that issue. However, a little time in the oven presented her with a new one. The storebought apples had turned to mush while the originals had held up. What to tell the guests awaiting her famous tarte tatin? zahavah was quick on her toes after remembering a recent New York Times article and presented a Pomegranate applesauce tarte tatin. Bravissimo!

A big thank you to everyone for sharing their imperfect recipes for this week's Weekend Cook and Tell challenge. Be sure to head over to Talk and read about next week's challenge: Keen on Quinoa